It makes me happy that Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) is willing to speak the truth on things like impeachment, the Harriet Miers / Joshua Bolten contempt citation, and, in this choice chunk of public hearing, Condoleeza Rice’s role in pushing lies in the run-up to war:

This entry was posted by jbc
on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 10:45 pm and is filed under george_w_bush, war.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

43 Responses to “Condi Gets Her Nasty Face On”

Wow! She was great in that piece, everyone in this administration should be this forceful.

I only wish the gentleman would have read that stack of “lies” instead of just used the pile as a prop. The assembled masses would have gotten bored after hearing the same thing repeated over and over.

ahhh if only we had a rwnj to leap in here and tell us about how a certain figure (figures) in mid 20th C. dispensed some wisdom about how to get sheeple to believe a lie… yup, just repeat it often and forcefully

dear rwnjs, please try reading about the Office of Special Plans – tasked with cooking the intelligence books on Iraq. I suggest wiki for a start, conservapedia had nothing (it is full of antigay crap). OSP was run by Paul (War!) Wolfowitz and Douglas (Dumbest fucker on the planet according to Gen Tommy Franks) Feith. Neocon dream go boom! ;-)

I hereby enter into the record your name for posterity shall be: Condolieza Lies

You all know where I stand on this, so I’ll wait to answer Inky, it would just be a rehash. Other than my above comment on this video that the impression Dems are giving is that the administration told 950 + “lies” instead of 1 “lie” 950 times, the gentleman says the study was conducted by a non partisan group, non partisan? Give me a break, go their website or read their list of donors an tell me with a straight face they are non partisan.

This was posted as the main item on the Michael Moore website, and on watching it there I wondered why he did so. Maybe he is trying to appear less partisan? Wexlar did a horrible job here, I was waiting the whole video for him to roll out some opposing opinions and catch Condi in a big stupid lie, but he did not do so. I thought that was one of Condi’s better performances, she even got emotional and mad she believed her own lie so well. You know where I stand on this issue (Condi and the rest of the neo-cons are almost certainly criminally culpable for promoting a false picture of Saddam and Iraq) however this video does nothing to support that position.

If this is the best Wexler and others can do in speaking truth to power, then America is in deeper doo-doo than I had thought.

What’s really interesting to me is what I just saw on tv. Apparently all the anti-war candidates are receiving the largest donations from US troops. Leading the way is Ron Paul (probably the fiercest critic of the whole lot), then Obama and Clinton.

To me this suggests that the people on the front lines do not agree with US foreign policy. Interesting indeed.

NL,
That is interesting and I’d agree with your conclusion but maybe a secondary reason is that many of them are also just plain worn out and sick of fighting on what is looking more and more like the wrong side of a fight for freedom.

I also found this interesting

Yes this is Biased (and a little over the top with it’s comparisons to Germany 1939) but sometimes it is good to understand the perspective of the other side:
www . informationclearinghouse.info/article19347.htm

Here is an opposing view to the Paul contribution of the military. It’s just a blog so take it with a grain of salt. The discussion below it is kind of interesting. Looks like Paul has about the same support in terms of votes as in the general population. And all this is over $40k? That is what, a plane ride and a rally in Des Moines?

This one is interesting, go to the Republican page and see how much money on hand Paul has. Now I don’t think that is his money for personal use, but it will sure make his next run in Texas politics comfortable.

Colorado house bill 1066 authored by Cory Gardner, Minority Whip, was defeated in committee. This bill would extend the “make my day” law to your place of business and lower the bar from you feel your life is in danger to you are threatened. The committee was composed of 5 Democrats and 4 Republicans with a Democrat chairman, the spoils of a majority. Mr. Gardner had secured two Democratic votes so the bill should have gone to the floor for debate. The vote was taken at 9:00 in the evening with the 2 wayward Democrats absent, the bill was killed in committee. When Mr. Gardner asked the vote be postponed until all members were present, he was denied. Another perk of being in the majority.

First, forget what the bill is about, it could be about the banning of widgets and be the same, that it is a gun bill is only interesting because that makes it a very partisan issue.

The way the rules work in our system is the party in power gets to determine the makeup of the committees, the chairmanship, and to a certain extent the rules of the Senate or House. In this case the R’s had the vote to send the bill on to the next step of the process which would have been debate on the House floor, then it would go to a vote, the bill would be sent to the Senate for debate and modification, back to the House and so forth until both branches approve or defeat the bill. It would then go the Governor who would send it back for further modification, sign, veto or leave on his desk the remainder of the session where it would die.

A long process, we are talking here about only the first step. So the R’s have the votes needed even though the D’s have stacked the deck against the R’s by appointing more D’s to the committee than R’s. But since the D’s are in power, they can also appoint the chairman of the committee, he sets the agenda, so the D’s wait until 9:00 at night to hold the vote hoping to not have the entire committee present and I’m sure they scheduled the vote of another bill that the 2 D’s that were crossing party lines had to vote on at the same time. This ensures this bill will not see the light of day. They also have the power to deny the request for a postponement of the vote. The R can ask, and the D just says no. The bill is dead, it can be resurrected by attaching it to another bill, but it probably won’t because the House, Senate, and Governor are all Democrat in Colorado so this probably wouldn’t even pass the House and would certainly be vetoed.

So why go through all this for a bill that doesn’t stand a chance? Because Colorado is a Republican state by the numbers but is controlled by Democrats because of underhanded Gerrymandering. But that is for another time. Democrats don’t want a popular issue like this to even be debated in public because it could be used as tool to defeat them in the next election.

So you see in this case and many others the man doesn’t make the difference, the numbers of D’s and R’s does. And this is the case when Republicans are in power as well.

Since this is all so foreign to you guys I should probably explain that last sentence. The man, Cory in this case, can’t engage in the democratic process until he makes his way through the procedural maze. So no matter how persuasive he is or how just his cause his voice will never be heard arguing his bill before a vote is taken unless he is in the majority party. Not on something this important to the other side anyway. The minority will be given some crumbs along the way to feed their base, but nothing substantial since the majority will someday be the minority and they want to be treated with some respect when that day comes. This is all cyclical.

This is the reason a marginal candidate like Ron Paul is not worth the vote in the primary. A Libertarian will never get more than 1% of the popular vote in a general election so no matter how much I agree with him he will do me no good in a general election.

… that is just the way it’s done in politics even the simplest issues get convoluted. A few years back I was involved in the charter school movement in Colorado. We were trying to get legislation passed that would give charter schools 95% of the money normal schools get instead of the 80% they were getting at the time. Bear in mind that charter schools have to pay for their own building whereas the building of a normal school is done via a bond issue, so when you consider in our case 20 to 25 percent of our budget was to pay rent on a school that had been abandoned by another district and then only get 80% of the money allotted to the kid, we were at a distinct disadvantage when it came to giving our teachers a decent wage (85% of the cost of education is salary). My brother in law, who is lobbyist, was helping us as much as he could. He is a lobbyist for the horse racing industry, so his time to help us was limited. He was making deals with lawmakers for us using markers from his racing deals which and been exchanged for deals on god knows what other issues so our teachers could get a decent wage. When the smoke cleared at the end of the session we had met all the conditions governor Roy Romer had given us before he would sign this bill, on the last day of the session he told us he wasn’t going to sign the bill, so it died. But there was no veto on his record. The teacher’s union had gotten to him and promised him something, we had promised him nothing, taking him at his word. He was from Holly after all, the same town of less than a thousand souls my brother in law is from, surely he won’t lie to us. Well, he did. So our teachers didn’t get a raise because of the teachers union, (their monopoly is more important than teachers welfare) and what happened to Roy? He became superintendent for the Los Angeles school district after he left office. Payback?

So again party mattered more than person. Roy isn’t a bad guy, he’s friendly and personable, as honest as any politician, and I think he truly wanted to sign that bill but the Democratic party is beholding to the teachers union. If that had been a Republican the bill would have passed. It didn’t matter how noble our cause or how ethical all the parties involved, it came down to D’s vs R’s

P.S. The bill did eventually pass after R’s took over, (without my help damn it, no glory)

None of these confused rants make much sense to me.
They seem to have even less to do with the idea of voting party line for decades without regard to the qualifications of the candidate. In rwnj’s world if you are an R, you are good, if you are anything other than R, you are bad (or as TV would put it Evil™). Ds? Double plus ungood! Libs? fertilizer

So you want a law that says it is OK to shoot someone and get away with it if you feel threatened. Not life or limb threatened, just “mommy I’m scared!” boom! sounds typically R. Shoot first, shoot second, reload and keep shooting. That is working so well for us in the world, don’t you think? Hey how is shrub’s democracy in the middle east thing going? his roadmap to peace? If you think either of these ‘initiatives’ is even remotely successful, you are indeed a extreme rwnj.

mb, just mb you are saying the Ds always screw the good decent Rs cuz thats what they do. They just hate Duhmerkkkuh. Rs is good, Ds is bad, (four legs good, two legs bad!) vote R no matter what, end of story. Personally as a life long independent voter this is exactly the thinking that I despise. There are any number of good explanations for the votes you bizarrely describe happening the way they do. It would seem from your posts that there is only one partisan explanation (tho, frankly I can’t figure it out from your muddled mess of an ‘explanation’)

The Rs are done. Hopefully for generations. Corruption, bad governance, worse ideas, bassackwards foreign policy, incompetence, fiscal insanity and partisan stupidity. I don’t hold out a whole lot of hope that the Ds will be orders of magnitude better. But then again FDR gave us the best part of the 20th century, I am hoping Barack will give us the best part of the 21st (o and the Clinton years: best economy in decades, longest, strongest sustained economic boom, ever [or should I say – yet]). Gobama!

I don’t know how to help you here, I told you not to worry about the issue, and yet you go off about the issue, I plainly say that the same things happens to D’s when R’s are in power so I’m not blaming D’s (except for the gerrymandering) this is just how the process works. You obviously aren’t smart enough or patient enough to understand it but don’t go off on your R hating rant, ask questions, do research, learn. There is nothing wrong with being ignorant of an issue. This all makes sense to me but I’m close to the story. If there is a part you don’t understand ask, I’ll try and clarify. Bumper sticker politics is for the dimwitted and unengaged, I don’t think that applies to anyone here, you just have to work a little bit.

On the other hand I’m perfectly happy if you vote the man, at the margins you will occasionally vote for someone other than a Democrat, and every time you do it helps the Republican. And all the R’s thank you.

Neither of your examples seems to have anything to do with voting party line over competence. Get a grip. Your ‘explanations’ are meandering diatribes about how Ds foiled a glorious plan to allow you to shoot anyone who ‘threatens’ you (typical). Or getting your fair share of the public education pie (which sounds much more reasonable).

McLame will have your vote simply because he is nominated, not because he is a better candidate for the desperately needed leadership that this country so sorely lacks. You and the rest of the ‘party line’ morans should be ashamed, but of course, you aren’t… you just blame it all the Other and accept no responsibility for the shit hole you and shrubco have dug us into.

I was hoping for McCain in ’00 (he would have done a better job than the current moran). But after watching him dry hump shrubby for 7-8 years, there is no way in hell I am going to vote for his pro-torture, two-faced, lyin, religion switching/pandering, tea-baggin, bombombom Iran, and 100 years in Iraq nonsense. Despite his bangin that cute lobbyist (nice tit for tat favors he did for her clients, Mr last of the Keating 5).

It’s not a huge deal, it’s just that so many times things are taken out of context. If I have spare time I like to look them up. One of your quotes of Bush was a joke if you saw it in context. I know you’re just pulling them off a calendar or something, and they are kind of fun. If the source is handy I try and include it if not I just say so. the two you cited look pretty straight forward, I can’t see them being out of context.

Your niece probably says more sensible things than most adults, politicians or otherwise, she may be worth quoting.

Question, did the stuff I said above make sense to you? (about voting a party line) Even if you don’t agree. I didn’t think it was that hard to follow, but sometimes it makes sense to the writer but not the reader.

shcb,
It was I who originally asked for another explanation, I read it quick without a critical eye and tried to post a reply, but at work sometimes my posts do not get through, and this was such a time.

My post was basically that your response made sense, but I was almost sorry I’d asked because it was a tough read vs. the little knowledge I gained; given my unfamiliarity with your election turf. (Where is there a simple cheat sheet on how to vote in US elections?)

Then you started having so much fun with Inky I decided to let you and he carry on. Some battles are best viewed from afar, he seems to be overly upset about not so subtly hidden messages in your choices of examples and you see no reason to look past his non-stop babbling insults for any possiblity of reason or any possible rationality for his apparent rage. He might have something sane to say, it’s hard to tell, perhaps it is just some hormonal problems getting hammered out on his keypad.

Enkidu, some battles are not worth fighting, but who am I to tell such a thing to a wildman? Here’s one you might want to chase, I hear Bush is at 14%? I can’t be bothered to look closer but thought you might be interested:http://americanresearchgroup.com/economy/

shcb, lol you’re probably right about my niece (and all nieces for that matter).

I was trying to see your perspective in your posts above, and I kind of almost did.

But I just can’t see myself deciding right now what kind of car I will buy in 20 years, because right now I don’t know which will be the best one for me. That’s where I’m coming from. But I appreciate your stance, just don’t agree, as usual. :)

All my rambling really just boils down to you can’t win if you can’t play. I tried but I just can’t seem to come up with a good analogy. Try and reread those posts without thinking that they are about politics, think it is about a coworker that is a person that has no problem stabbing you in the back and will if it will advance his or her chances of a promotion. See if it makes more sense then. I used real examples to lend credence to my posts. It may have been easier to understand if I had used a more abstract example.

Knarly, you asked about a place to look for election thumbnails. In the past the League of Women Voters has been recognized as one of the best places for unbiased information of the candidates. In the last decade or so they have taken a turn to the left, too much for me but about right for you. They aren’t radical left but a little left of center. Try them, let me know what you think. Is that what you were interested in or were you more interested in the process than the candidates?

I was thinking about your point that that you don’t know what car you will be buying in twenty years. A person can change his philosophy over the years, Churchill said a man that is 20 and isn’t a liberal has no heart and a man that is 30 and isn’t a conservative has no brain, or something like that. But in our system it still makes sense to vote a party line. Given the way our system works at some point you would simply stop voting for D’s and start voting for R’s or vice versa. That probably isn’t true in the Canadian system, I don’t know enough about it to say. And that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for exception, I have voted for our sheriff, a Democrat, twice but that position is one that is pretty well insulated from committees and such. I also voted for Roy Romer several times. In that case the Republicans put up a truly despicable candidate that even I couldn’t support. But my overwhelming default is to vote Republican.

If I give NL any bad information, please correct me, I’m not a poly sci major (or even a sergeant)

NL,

It depends on which state you live in. You have to realize that when America was formed it was a confederacy of individual states forming a union. All the states had and still have a certain independence from the federal government. They all have their own constitutions for instance. We have evolved (or devolved in my opinion) to the point that the states are less independent and the federal government is very powerful. This may seem archaic but in reality is was a couple hundred years ahead of the curve. This is essentially what the European Union is trying to emulate.

Back to your question. Party affiliation really only counts in the primaries, you can vote for whoever you want in the general election and typically there are several choices D and R of course, then usually the Libertarian party, Socialists, Communist Party, Green party etc. I don’t know what it takes to get you party on the ballot, I think it has to do with polling.

Party affiliation mostly affects the primaries. Every state is a little different. In Colorado if you are a registered R or D you can only vote in your respective primary, if you are an I you can pick one or the other but not both (I think). In some states, (Kansas for instance) I’s can’t vote in the primary. In New Hampshire I don’t think you even have to be a citizen of the state. So in Colorado we are fairly evenly divided R, D and I with the R’s having a slight lead in registered voters. In Kansas there are very few registered I’s mostly R’s. Those are the only two states I have ever been a registered voter.

shcb,
What I was looking for was something that gives a short, simple overview of process and the relative importance of each primary and how the delegates are lining up going into the conventions; without all the sensationalism you get in the press where almost every contest is billed as being critical for this or that candidate, when most are not. Such a thing probably does not exist.

With all due respect to the League of Women Voters, I could interpret your referring me there as a declaration of war. Perhaps that was just your way of retaliating for the “sheared head country baaaa” posts, and if so I’d say we are even. ;-)

I was being serious, I should have said something, I thought you might take it that way. Sorry.

I’ll look for what you are asking. I don’t off the top of my head know of such information. as i was describing to NL our system is something of a patchwork with all 50 states marching to their own drummer so I don’t know how concise it can be. There is a group that puts out a rather expensive book every two years that is very detailed but I don’t remember their name. they are about as non paratison as you can get. I’ll see if I can find their name and see what they have on their website.

shcb,
I didn’t take it that way at first, then I got suspicious about your motives. Thanks, but don’t put much effort into looking for a US elections crib sheet, it is not too important to me, I was just curious and thinking it might help prevent me from saying anything excruciatingly stupid on this site.

shcb,
There are a couple of items that I’d be interested to hear your opinion about, just a simple “sounds right to me” or “that’s a bunch of garbage” – no 600 words essay required. And, only if the items are of interest to you in the first place (otherwise feel free to ignore). (I read the War Nerd’s article but have just skimmed the Bill Moyers item it is probably more interesting to you than it is to me.) These are them:

Actually shcb,
There are a couple of items that I’d be interested to hear your opinion about, just a simple “sounds right to me” or “that’s a bunch of garbage” – no 600 words essay required. And, only if the items are of interest to you in the first place (otherwise feel free to ignore). (I read the War Nerd’s article but have just skimmed the Bill Moyers item it is probably more interesting to you than it is to me.) These are them:

I’ll get it for you, we’re having new counter tops put in tomorrow so I’m a bit busy now. I wouldn’t mind having the info myself. I think we all know you guys don’t know how our system works any better than we know how yours does. so don’t worry about asking. I won’t bs you but I may be wrong. Most of what I know is just from listening to Rosen, that and being involved in a few incidents as I said above. I was amazed when I got involved in the Charter School bill at how the system really worked. I thought they wrote a bill, voted and that was it. Boy was I wrong. I’m guessing your system has similar quarks, I imagine all systems do.

I like the war nerd and I usually agree with him, I only read the first couple pages but: I’ve heard the v-22 is starting to come around, I imagine it was just as he says, a revolutionary aircraft. I’ve never heard anything bad about the FA-18, and the Raptor makes sense to me. The F15 is getting old, it is a Viet Nam era plane it is an incredible plane but not stealthy, the F117 is essentially an f15 with a stealth skin and isn’t armed or super sonic. It makes good fiscal sense to me to replace the F117, F15, maybe even the F16 with one plane.

Some of the Moyer’s piece is garbage, some good. Ike is taken out of context and has been for 45 years. Ear marks, pork, whatever is bad and everywhere. I heard a woman say once she was on a panel the help the LA school district work on their books, the group she was with was a volunteer group of accountants, they figured the administrators were educators and just not good at accounting. They found a maze of accounts that sometimes ended in a dead end with millions of dollars dropping off the end of the earth. I don’t have a solution.

maybe its a ‘darlak at tanagra’ kind of thing with the whole voting party line idea…

I apologize if I have bruised the sensibilities of some readers with my description of the presumptive R front runner (if you like I could back up each of those points with extensive research and URLs for each statement, but I am sure it would fall on partisan ears).

Hey did you hear McCain is trying to break the McCain Feingold campaign finance law? Nice. Write a decent idea into law, then break the law you helped author. That is just so…. R. Oh the iRony!

shcb – I really cannot grok what you are saying in reply here. I was referring to McCain trying to weasel out of public financing. So there is an exemption for Indian casinos or something? I am talking about him breaking the law that he helped write. Classy!

I’m with you on this one. I haven’t read the article but McCain breaking his own law would not be out of character. What I am saying is when he wrote the law he put in an exemption that would primarily favor him. Since so much money in Arizona is going to be funneled through the Indian casinos. Soros did the same thing in Congress’ last attempt at subverting the 1st Amendment. He put in a clause that left a loophole for the 521C’s. His advantage was short lived and the Swift Boat guys used the loophole a few months later, but he had the upper hand for a little while. Welcome to bare knuckled politics.

I’m striking out on finding the information you are loking for. everything I have found so far is someone’s opinion and is skewed one way or the other. Congressional Quarterly and National Journal are faily non partisan but I didn’t see that they had what I think you are looking for. It was either too detailed or you had to get out your credit card. Sorry, If I come across something I’ll let you know.